#NowPlaying #jazzsky

Danish Radio Big Band & Symphony Orchestra / Miho Hazama - Live Life This Day (2025)

Hard to pick a "best of" jazz album list for 2025 (loads of great stuff) but this is definitely right up there. Pleasantly surprised to see Hazama get a Grammy nom.

.... It's very good, a bit more accessible / straight ahead than previous JBLQ albums (which I also really like), probably the best intro to his quartet stuff. I also recommend his album with the Messthetics and the also-great non-quartet solo albums (eg this year's "Apple Cores")

..... The message, I suppose, is that this album seems less about structures and concepts and more about just writing tunes and making music.

So is the title a misnomer? Maybe previous albums were the abstraction and this one is the deliverance....

The CD/ digital version has four extra tracks that streaming doesn't. Glad I dropped the money for the physical CD here.

A real critic would note that it's occasionally a bit loose and out of phase with itself but it never loses its vitality and musicality

I first heard it as performed during one of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's Christmas concerts, it was a moment of unlikely resonance in amongst all the carols.

It all sounds fantastic too, I think the combination of the playing and the production means that something that could sound really muddy... doesn't. Expect it to show up on best of 2026 lists.

Wikipedia says Hiroa pulled back from the band in May 2024, his last work with the band seems to be the track "Burning." Ex- Chai drummer Yuna not only took over live duties but plays on most of the new album.

Hopefully he's doing OK.

The rest of Gen Hoshino's stuff skews closer to pop/soul, but eg "Comedy" is a track Don Fagan wouldn't be ashamed of and "Life" is as good as any classic 70's piano-based rock track. "Create" has an almost Zappa-ish intro so for a pop album there's a good mix of influences.

Well the three guests are American... the two Sams have made or played on some great jazz/ adjacent stuff, and Louis Cole (also the drummer here) has a vibrant career with Knower and his solo stuff- eg check out his album with Metropole Orkest.

Completely agree with your comment on Patricia Brennan. I never tire of her playing.

#jpop Gen Hoshino's album "Gen" was a solid pop/soul effort, for me not every track landed but the great far outweighed the lesser and I enjoyed it a lot. Worth buying for "Mad Hope", "Comedy" and "Life" alone.

This one just out. It's terrific.

Good article. Humiliating Marles is the best thing that could have happened.

Hopefully the US will keep doing it.

Maybe one day he'll learn.

It's an underlying thread in several of Higashino's "Detective Kaga" series.